Donald Trump has scored a legislative victory with staggering costs. The price of the tax bill has to be measured not only in the loss American society will face in the increase in inequality, in the impact on public health, and the growth of the deficit, but also in the damage to political culture inflicted by the spectacle of one powerful man after another telling lies of various sorts.

All along there has been Trump claiming that the bill was a “gift” to the middle class. That this assertion appears to have no basis in fact has not affected the President’s statements. The President’s Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, maintained that his department had run the numbers and had shown that the tax bill would pay for itself. It appears that he lied, not so much about the result of the Treasury’s study but about the existence of the study itself: the Times reported last month that the analysis had not been done.

This was a Trumpian lie, which is distinct from other kinds of political lying. It might be called a power lie: its purpose is not to convince the audience of something that isn’t true but to demonstrate the power of the speaker. Trump tweets blatant lies, repeatedly, to show that he can—and that by virtue of his bully pulpit, his words, however absurd, always have consequences. Mnuchin showed that he can do the same thing, and that he has more power than the opposition.

Comments (8)

I characterize Trump as a convenient puppet for the true “dictators” to whom the dictators must pay verbal homage to keep him believing his fantasy that he’s their leader.

The difference is that a dictator wields all the power and thus homage paid to them is a form of self preservation and avoiding any appearance of not obeying the leaders wishes and intentions.

Trump is like a child king. The king’s court must keep him happy, distracted, and believing his power is absolute when he had none at all. In other words the court simply manages the child king.

Longtooth

December 27, 2017 9:45 pm

Trump is truly a case for psychological character analysis.. the workings of a deranged but still semi-functional mind is a curious thing people would love to understand more about.

What’s even more curious to me is why nearly 50% of voters preferred a deranged but semi-functional mind as their leader. Trumps of the world are probably a dime a dozen.. how they get to the top though is something we need a better understanding of… and that revolves entirely around how people perceive such characters…. not the character themselves

Longtooth

December 27, 2017 9:48 pm

If this is allowed to continue past the mid-terms we’ll be witness to the total collapse of a political system in real time. That’s mMy best guess anyway.

Longtooth

December 27, 2017 9:54 pm

What will remain is a theater of the prior system but scripted and stage managed to give the appearance that it still exists..

Longtooth

December 27, 2017 9:58 pm

And after a while people will catch on, but by then who will have the power to change it? A military coup d’état perhaps?

Longtooth

December 27, 2017 10:04 pm

And under whose authority would a coup d’état occur? Pense is just the puppet in waiting. Third in succession is Ryan.. one of the dictators in chief so any authority leading a coup has to come from outside the kings court … and then what?

Anyway food for thought and speculation. .

JimH

December 28, 2017 11:08 am

The new tax bill is awful. Period.

But this author does not seem to understand American politics at any sort of deep level.

American politicians run for office by making promises and when elected they make only feeble attempts to fulfill most of those promises. This describes the actions of both of major political party candidates.

The un sanitized version is that political candidates lie. They are not children, they know that they will not be able to make any progress on most of their promises.

I have been voting in elections every other year for a long time, and it did not take very long for me to understand the process. Thus I became an Independent.

Part of the problem is that elected politicians find themselves subservient to political party objectives. The voters find plenty of cause to object to the platforms of both political parties. They are written by committees and will be paid for by the tax payers. I can not imagine a process more inclined to abuse.

The other major problem is that both political parties use social agendas to split the electorate. (Whatever is hot during the campaign season.) So the electorate has been distracted from any realization that both parties have allowed the US economy to be damaged over a period of at least 25 years.

And the proponents of those social issues spend a great deal of time and effort to predict doom if their issue is not addressed immediately.

The end result is that the electorate comes to believe that there is evil around. One does not compromise with evil. And that is reflected in the successful candidates.

Once upon a time we accepted that elected candidates would implement their policies while making compromises as needed. They could only hope to push their agenda a little further along. And if they went too far, the electorate threw the rascals out!

But that is no longer good enough. We are seeing legislators of both parties enact the most important laws by strict party line vote.

I blame part of our current situation on US Supreme Court actions. They have not been confining themselves to interpreting laws. They pretend to read the minds of the founding fathers, or improve on the founders’ thinking. The broad paths of American society have been plotted by judicial fiat since at least 1954. Who could object to the principles espoused in Brown v Board of Education? But once 9 individuals can interpret the US Constitution and dictate to 163,000,000 individuals, where does it end? Who should be trusted with that kind of power? And so the power to appoint US Supreme Court justices is the power to grant lifetime appointments to our masters.

Why do we elect the President, why not have the US Congress appoint him for his lifetime?

With all of that history, is it any wonder that the people and their representatives shun compromise? The stakes in any particular election have become too high!

Joel

December 29, 2017 6:55 am

“Why do we elect the President . . . ?”

We don’t. The POTUS is appointed by the electoral college. That’s why HRC could win the election by nearly 3 million votes and Trump still got to be POTUS.